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“Saint George and the Dragon”: Courts and the Development of the Administrative State in Twentieth-Century America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 April 2009

Reuel Schiller
Reuel Schiller
Affiliation:
University of California, Hastings College of Law
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Extract

In January 1938, James Landis, Dean of Harvard Law School, author of much of the New Deal's securities legislation, and a former member of the Securities and Exchange Commission, traveled to New Haven, Connecticut, to deliver the prestigious Storrs Lectures at Yale Law School. His subject was “The Administrative Process.” Of particular interest to Landis was defining the correct relationship between courts and the administrative state. According to Landis, the interaction between agencies and courts “gives a sense of battle.”1 He continued: “Here one is presented with decisions that speak of contest between two agencies of government— one, like St. George, eternally refreshing its vigor from the stream of democratic desires, the other majestically girding itself with the wisdom of the ages.”2

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Policy History , Volume 17 , Issue 1: Special Issue: New Directions in Policy History , January 2005 , pp. 110 - 124
Copyright
Copyright © The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. 2005

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References

Notes

1. Landis, James M., The Administrative Process (New Haven, 1938), 123Google Scholar.

2. Ibid.

3. Jaffe, Louis L., Judicial Control of Administrative Action (Boston, 1965), 320Google Scholar.

4. See, for example, Portland Cement Ass'n v. Ruckelshaus, 486 F.2d 375, 394 (D.C. Cir. 1973); Friendly, Henry J., “Some Kind of Hearing,” University of Pennsylvania Law Review 123 (1975): 1311 n. 221Google Scholar.

5. See, for example, Skowronek, Stephen, Building a New American State: The Expansion of National Administrative Capacities, 1877–1920 (Cambridge, 1982), 24–31Google Scholar.

6. Ibid., 287, 289.

7. Stewart, Richard B., “The Reformation of American Administrative Law,” Harvard Law Review 88 (1975): 669Google Scholar; Rabin, Robert L., “Federal Regulation in Historical Perspective,” Stanford Law Review 38 (1986): 1189Google Scholar; Merrill, Thomas W., “Capture Theory and the Courts: 1967–1983,” Chicago-Kent Law Review 72 (1997): 1039Google Scholar; Shapiro, Martin, Who Guards the Guardians? Judicial Control of Administration (Athens, Ga., 1988)Google Scholar; Schiller, Reuel E., “Reining in the Administrative State,” in Ernst, Daniel R. and Jew, Victor, eds., Total War and the Law: The American Home Front in World War II (Westport, 2002), 185Google Scholar; idem, “Rulemaking's Promise: Administrative Law and Legal Culture in the 1960s and 1970s,” Administrative Law Review 53 (2001): 1139; idem, “Enlarging the Administrative Polity: Administrative Law and the Changing Definition of Pluralism, 1945–1970,” Vanderbilt Law Review 53 (2000): 1389.

8. For some prominent examples form the U.S. Supreme Court's docket, see Smyth v. Ames, 169 U.S. 466 (1898); Ohio Water Valley v. Ben Avon Borough, 253 U.S. 287 (1920); Crowell v. Benson, 285 U.S. 22 (1930).

9. Landis, The Administrative Process, 154–55.

10. Shamir, Ronen, Managing Legal Uncertainty: Elite Lawyers in the New Deal (Durham, 1995), 131–132Google Scholar. See also Shepherd, George B., “Fierce Compromise: The Administrative Procedure Act Emerges from New Deal Politics,” Northwestern Law Review 90 (1996): 1571–1572Google Scholar.

11. Zeppos, Nicholas S., “The Legal Profession and the Development of Administrative Law,” Chicago-Kent Law Review 72 (1997): 1139–1151Google Scholar.

12. Shamir, Managing Legal Uncertainty, 109–13; Shepherd, “Fierce Compromise,” 1649–52; Schiller, “Reining in the Administrative State,” 198–99.

13. Schiller, “Rulemaking's Promise,” 1139.

14. The ABA's critique was expressed most forcefully in the 1938 Annual Report of the Special Committee on Administrative Law, chaired by Pound, Roscoe. “Report of the Special Committee on Administrative Law,” American Bar Association Annual Report (1938): 342Google Scholar. For an account of the ABA's general hostility to administrative action, see Shepherd, “Fierce Compromise,” 1569–78.

15. Securities and Exchange Commission v. Chenery, 332 U.S. 194, 216 (1947), (Jackson, J., dissenting). See also Justice Douglas's opinion for the Court in Estep v. United States, 327 U.S. 114 (1946).

16. Landis, The Administrative Process, 39.

17. Schiller, “Rulemaking's Promise,” 1166–68.

18. In addition to the materials cited in note 7, see White, G. Edward, “Allocating Power Between Agencies and Courts: The Legacy of Justice Brandeis,” in White, G. Edward, Patterns of American Legal Thought (Indianapolis, 1978), 227–287Google Scholar.

19. See, for example, Schiller, Reuel E., “Free Speech and Expertise: Administrative Censorship and the Birth of the Modern First Amendment,” Virginia Law Review 86 (2000): 1Google Scholar; and McCurdy, Charles W., “The Roots of Liberty of Contract Reconsidered: Major Premises in the Law of Employment, 1867–1937,” Yearbook of the Supreme Court Historical Society (1984): 20Google Scholar.

20. Carpenter, Daniel P., The Forging of Bureaucratic Autonomy: Reputations, Networks, and Policy Innovation in Executive Agencies, 1862–1928 (Princeton, 2001), 257–275Google Scholar.

21. Pure Food Act of 1906, 34 Stat. 768, 769, section 4; Weber, Gustavus A., The Food, Drug, and Insecticide Administration: Its History, Activities, and Organization (Baltimore, 1928), 41–43Google Scholar.

22. United States v. Twenty Cans of Grape Juice, 189 F. 331 (2d Cir. 1911); United States v. Certain Cans of Syrup, 192 F. 79 (E.D. Penn 1911).

23. United States v. Morgan, 181 F. 587 (S.D.N.Y. 1910); Schraubstadter v. United States, 199 F. 568 (9th Cir. 1912).

24. United States v. Nine Barrels of Olives, 179 F. 983 (E.D.Penn. 1910); United States v. Seventy-Four Cases of Grape Juice, 181 F. 629 (W.D.N.Y. 1910); United States v. Fifty Barrels of Whiskey, 165 F. 966 (D.Md. 1908); United States v. Sixty-Five Casks Liquid Extracts, 170 F. 449 (N.D. W.Va. 1909).

25. United States v. Morgan, 222 U.S. 274 (1911).

26. National Remedy Co. v. Hyde, 50 F.2d 1066 (D.C. Cir. 1931).

27. See, for example, United States v. St. Louis Coffee and Spice Mills, 189 F. 191 (E.D.Mo. 1909); In re Wilson, 168 F. 566 (D.R.I. 1909); United States v. Northwestern Fisheries, 224 F. 274 (W.D. Wash. 1915); French Silver Dragee Co. v. United States, 179 F. 824 (2d Cir. 1910).

28. For a selection of essays on this subject by these and other authors, see Weir, Margaret, Orloff, Ann Shola, and Skocpol, Theda, eds., The Politics of Social Policy in the United States (Princeton, 1988)Google Scholar.

29. Ann Shola Orloff, “The Political Origins of America's Belated Welfare State,” in Weir, Orloff, and Skocpol, The Politics of Social Policy in the United States, 73–80.

30. Sandler, Ross and Schoenbrod, David, Democracy by Decree: What Happens When Courts Run Government (New Haven, 2003)Google Scholar.

31. Mashaw, Jerry L., Due Process and the Administrative State (New Haven, 1985), 32–41Google Scholar; Simon, William H., “The Rule of Law and the Two Realms of Welfare Administration,” Brooklyn Law Review 56 (1990): 784–788Google Scholar.

32. These two examples come from Heckler v. Campbell, 461 U.S. 458 (1983), and Director, Officer of Workers' Compensation Programs v. Greenwich Collieries, 512 U.S. 267 (1994).

33. Mashaw, Jerry L. and Harfst, David L., The Struggle for Auto Safety (Cambridge, Mass., 1990)Google Scholar.

34. Ackerman, Bruce A. and Hassler, William T., Clean Coal, Dirty Air (New Haven, 1981), 111–114Google Scholar.

35. Katznelson, Ira, “The State to the Rescue? Political Science and History Reconnect,” Social Research 59 (1992): 719Google Scholar; Ernst, Daniel R., “Law and American Political Development, 1877–1938,” Reviews in American History 26 (1998): 205Google Scholar.

36. Belz, Herman, “Changing Conceptions of Constitutionalism in the Era of World War II and the Cold War,” Journal of American History 59 (1972): 640, 641, 646–47Google Scholar; Nelson, William E., “The Changing Meaning of Equality in Twentieth-Century Constitutional Law,” Washington and Lee Law Review 52 (1995): 3, 21–28Google Scholar; Bixby, David M., “The Roosevelt Court, Democratic Ideology, and Minority Rights: Another Look at United States v. Classic,” Yale Law Journal 90 (1981): 762–767Google Scholar; Klarman, Michael J., “Brown, Racial Change, and the Civil Rights Movement,” Virginia Law Review 80 (1994): 25–26 and nn.73–75Google Scholar.

37. Schiller, “Reining in the Administrative State,” 196–99.

38. Schiller, “Enlarging the Administrative Polity,” 1417–42.

39. NLRB v. Sterling Electric Motors, 112 F.2d 63, 68 (9th Cir. 1940). All three members of the panel, judges Denman, Mathews, and Healy, were Roosevelt appointees. Who's Who in America 21 (1940–1941): 755, 1209, 1713Google Scholar. Judge Healy dissented.

40. See, for example, Estep v. United States, 327 U.S. 114, 121–22 (majority opinion) and 131–32 (Murphy, concurring); SEC v. Chenery, 332 U.S. 194, 216–17 (1947) (Jackson, J., dissenting); New York v. United States, 342 U.S. 882, 884 (1951) (Douglas, J., dissenting).

41. Chamberlain, John, The American Stakes (New York, 1940), 27Google Scholar.

42. Galbraith, John Kenneth, American Capitalism: The Concept of Countervailing Power (Boston, 1956)Google Scholar.

43. Kolko, Gabriel, The Triumph of Conservatism (Chicago, 1967) (originally published in 1963), 287–305Google Scholar; Olson, Mancur, The Logic of Collective Action (Cambridge, Mass., 1965), 132–167Google Scholar. See also Schiller, “Enlarging the Administrative Polity,” 1411–12.

44. See, for example, McConnell, Grant, Private Power and American Democracy (New York, 1966), 366–369Google Scholar; Kariel, Henry S., The Decline of American Pluralism (Palo Alto, 1961), 273–291Google Scholar; Cahn, Edmond, The Predicament of Democratic Man (New York, 1961), 116Google Scholar; Schattschneider, E. E., The Semisovereign People: A Realist's View of Democracy in America (New York, 1960), 105, 141Google Scholar; Burns, James McGregor, The Deadlock of Democracy (Englewood Cliffs, 1963), 235–240, 323–40Google Scholar.

45. Office of Communications of the United Church of Christ v. FCC, 359 F.2d 994 (D.C.Cir. 1965).

46. Scenic Hudson Preservation Conference v. FPC, 345 F.2d 608 (2d. Cir. 1965).

47. Palisades Citizens Ass'n v. CAB, 420 F.2d 188 (D.C.Cir. 1969).

48. Church of Christ, 1004–5.

49. See note 7 above.

50. See, for example, Salyer, Lucy, Laws Harsh as Tigers: Chinese Immigrants and the Shaping of Modern Immigration Law (Chapel Hill, 1995)Google Scholar. Although Stephen Skowronek's germinal study of state-building generally pushes courts to the periphery, his examination of the relationship between the federal judiciary and the Interstate Commerce Commission does an excellent job of demonstrating how courts can have a profound effect on the development of governmental institutions. Skowronek, Building a New American State, 259–67.